Our Work

Education Equity

The Echo Empowerment Institute supports Southern Echo in its belief that all children should receive a free, fully funded, quality, and equitable education. This goal has always proven to be a challenge in Mississippi because of its long and violent history of racism and oppression. Many Mississippi systemic structures operate with the taint of exclusionism and prejudice, with the state’s education system receiving the brunt of the disregard. Specifically, the state’s failure to prioritize education has resulted in Mississippi’s public-school system being critically underfunded by millions of dollars. To make matters worse, few schools or districts within the state have truly embraced the mandates expressed in Brown v. Board of Education requiring the integration and equalization of all public schools, requiring the Department of Justice to still issue desegregation orders some fifty years later. The issues that plague Mississippi’s public education system are not limited to inadequate funding and desegregation orders, but also include efforts to privatize public funds, state-run school takeovers, and racially based student pushout.

Recently, Southern Echo, along with its partners and allies in education and with support from the Echo Empowerment Institute, has begun training for community members and educators in the Science of Learning and around Social Emotional Learning curricula. The Echo Empowerment Institute supports Southern Echo and its allies’ work to disrupt these efforts and ensure that every child has access to a quality, fully funded public education.

Youth Leadership

The Echo Empowerment Institute supports Southern Echo’s (YES!) Youth Empowerment 4 Scholars! Program. YES! is a program for youth, and their adult family members, that seeks to support traditional academics and college/career readiness while also training and educating participants on leadership, community organizing, and civic engagement. The program, begun in the summer of 2019, boasts a six-week long summer session and follow-up events and activities throughout the year. In 2020, Southern Echo plans to expand the program to include more events and activities, retooled, more in-depth curriculum, and a new community empowerment project to be chosen, implemented, and completed by the youth. It is the hope of this program to facilitate the growth and graduation of well-rounded, civically aware and engaged intergenerational population of Mississippi youth and voting-age citizens. However, due to the continued Covid-19 pandemic, all proposed interactions that follow below will be conducted virtually or in adherence to recommended social distancing and safety standards.

Expanding Democracy (Voting, Census and Redistricting)

Expanding Democracy means fostering and facilitating responsible, accountable governance that is responsive to the needs of the communities and constituency it serves. To accomplish this, the Echo Empowerment Institute supports Southern Echo’s work to foster and maintain a civically educated electorate and to ensure free, unfettered access to the polls. Specifically, in the wake of the global Covid-19 pandemic, safe and unfettered access to the polls is critical in maintaining the individual voting rights of Mississippi citizens. Safer options to in-person voting must be made available to communities. These may include early voting, multi-day voting, and vote by mail in addition to online voter registration. We must work to ensure that our legislators use federal funds to assist in Covid-19 safety adaptations and protocols around the upcoming elections.

As the 2020 population numbers will shape how political power and over 800 million dollars will be shared in the U.S. over the next ten years, the Echo Empowerment Institute supports Southern Echo’s work to help ensure an accurate Census count among historically undercounted or hard to count communities of color. The population count is of monumental importance as the results will determine the number of congressional seats and Electoral College votes. It will determine how federal funding is distributed for schools, roads, bridges, Medicare, and other public services in local communities.

Health Equity

The Echo Empowerment Institute supports Southern Echo’s work to address inequities in education, housing, and the political drivers of these inequities, through our grassroots capacity-building programming, census and redistricting training and monitoring, and governmental transparency and accountability organizing. However, within the last few years, health disparities have emerged from a primarily medical lens to be viewed in the context of the more fundamental injustices that Mississippians face, especially African Americans in low-wealth communities.

Specifically, in this time of uncertainty regarding the evolving Covid-19 or Corona Virus Pandemic, it is more important than ever that vulnerable and marginalized communities have unfettered access to accurate information and available resources and services. To this end, this page will be constantly updated and monitored to ensure that it provides the most relevant and reliable information available.

Energy Democracy (Rural Electric Cooperatives)

Though the nation’s electric cooperatives were created to be engines of economic opportunity, growth, and innovation, the intended beneficiaries of such cooperatives have become increasingly marginalized and vulnerable as non-democratic participation has excluded them out of cooperative governance. Those that live within cooperative service areas and receive service are member-owners of the cooperative. As such, members of the community should have a say in the cooperative’s governance and activities.

Within many of the cooperatives operating across the country, African Americans and low wealth member-owners often struggle to pay electricity bills, bills that can represent more than forty percent of their income. To make matters worse, these exorbitant energy costs are also accompanied by declining job opportunities, limited earnings, and crumbling infrastructure.

To combat the lack of knowledge and self-determinacy forced upon African Americans and low-wealth communities within many electric cooperative service areas, the Echo Empowerment Institute supports the work of Southern Echo as it provides an education and training hub for organizations and cooperative communities. In addition to providing data to inform the production of detailed databases and map creation, this program of work introduces, encourages, and help facilitates projects and plans that work to build an inclusive energy economy that focuses on clean/green energy opportunities while bolstering economic security and ending cycles of generational poverty within these vulnerable communities. A second highly focused and intensified facet of our training sessions works with potential leaders, those seeking leadership positions, and those currently holding leadership positions within the cooperative. These sessions focus on increasing the accountability and responsiveness to the communities served by cooperatives. With increased representation, both racial and gender based, cooperatives can establish a new trend of responsible, accountable governance.